Sunday, September 6, 2015

Hello all you party people out there
in cyberspace, I have great news for you; today you get a break from me and all
my inane ramblings. First off, thank you for visiting The Insane Asylum, now sit
back, get comfortable and please welcome my very special guest Mr. Kevin
Hightower to our ward. He’s not looking to just rock the boat here, he’s planning
on capsizing that some beach! When he’s through, the Titanic will look like
child’s play.

Let me
start you off with what the "Religious Right Wing" in America would
have you believe is an oxymoron. I am a Christian and I don't believe it is a
sin to be gay or to hand out a gay marriage license. I know for a fact that for
some people who identify as gay didn't choose to be gay. I know that God is
love incarnate and that he doesn't punish his creation for being his creation.
Cover your ears because this is going to ruffle some feathers. God created gay
people.

And you can
quote things from Leviticus and Deuteronomy to me all day but it's going to
fall on deaf ears because I consider myself a "Red Letter Christian."
It's not a denomination and we have no brick-and-mortar churches that I am
aware of. It means that I have a Bible with all of Jesus' words highlighted in
red. Before I ever read the Bible in its entirety I had to simplify things for
myself and I decided the way to demystify what this religion was all about was
to study the words and deeds of the man it is named for.

When I
focused in on nothing but the words of Jesus Christ I made a stunning
realization. The Jesus on TV and in too many churches is not anything like the
guy I read about in the Bible. The real oxymoron here is "Religious Right
Wing." Why? Because Jesus was a liberal and a socialist.

I think
there's two different views of Christianity at play here. The one that gets all
the media attention is more often than not contrary to the deeds and action of
Jesus Himself.

When I was
eight-years-old my dad told me my mother was going to burn in hell because she
was raised Catholic. He described in graphic detail the pain of being burned
alive forever and ever. I was pretty perceptive for my age and by that point my
dad gave me the creeps already. But he made me promise not to tell or I'd be in
huge trouble so I held it inside for almost a year until I became a pale shadow
of a once-happy child. I barely slept that year because the night brought
dreams of my mother, the one I trusted and has always believed in me, and stood
by me, screaming in flames.

No
eight-year-old should ever have to bear that burden and if I had a time machine
I'd take it straight back to that little boy and grab him, hug him and tell him
it's not true. This was my dad's way of being Christian. Jesus said to love one
another. There's no verse about scarring your child for life.

What it did
do was lead me astray later in life because I wanted no part of a God that
would send the most patient and kind woman I've ever met to a pit of fire.
Jesus did say woe to anyone who leads one of these little children away from me
and that it would be better for my dad to have a millstone hung around his neck
and thrown into the sea than to turn a child away from Jesus.

Finally,
the lack of sleep and nervousness became so noticeable that my mom, aunt and
uncle literally wondered if I was being abused.
And I was mentally being abused. I broke and finally told them. They
reassured me no such thing would happen. My uncle had a private talk with my
dad and I didn't hear all of it but I know it involved him not living to tell
about ever trying something like that again. My uncle was ready to be Jesus'
millstone.

So when I
grew older I despised the religion. Then during a troubled time I set about reading
the entire Bible cover to cover looking for answers and have done so twice. I
learned that all that time I spent reading the Old Testament was summed up in a
sentence or two by Jesus. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and love
your neighbor as yourself. This is the whole of the law and the prophets (The
Old Testament). In other words if you just do those things, because of Jesus’
sacrifice you have fulfilled God’s law.

To my great
surprise focusing in on just the words Jesus said revealed that He was nothing
like the Jesus paraded around by "Fundamentalists" and
"Conservatives." As a matter of fact I found that He was quite the
Liberal in His day, with the Pharisees and Sadducees being the Conservative
establishment. He had liberal ideas like giving to the poor and not concerning
yourself with whether or not they waste the money (welfare, food stamps). He
healed the sick freely without asking anything in return (universal
healthcare). He was not a Capitalist at all; He believed in the redistribution
of wealth and commanded His followers to give all their possessions to the poor
and follow Him.

When asked
if His people should pay taxes to Rome he told them to give Caesar what is due
to Caesar and give God what is due to God. Yet today the Republicans and the
Tea Party claim to be the Christian Party while insisting we shouldn’t be
taxed, it’s ok for 1% of the population to have 99% of the money because they
worked harder than you, healthcare shouldn’t be free and you have no right to
it and welfare programs for the poor who really need it, especially children
must be abolished because of the few who take advantage.

Don’t take
my word for it. Go read the Republican platform, the Tea Party Platform and
then the red words in the Bible and tell me I’m wrong.

And now
this court clerk Kim Davis thinks that she will go to Hell for handing out a
marriage license to gay people. Even if you insist on believing that
homosexuality is a sin, as a Christian you should be well aware that if Heaven
and Hell were based on our deeds we'd all be in trouble. To say that you can go
to Hell for acting any certain way is to deny Jesus' sacrifice altogether.

If she
found this morally objectionable she can say it was because of her religion,
but she'd be wrong. If you go with the idea that it is sinful to be in a gay
marriage then all you have to do to keep your morals in line is not be in a gay
marriage yourself. The same freedom that afford people to believe and do what
they feel is right morally, like people who want to be in a loving gay
marriage, is the same freedom that allows her to practice her version of
Christianity however misguided it might be.

And to
those who think she can't be fired or punished, you absolutely can force
someone within your employ to do something they find morally objectionable
because they have the freedom to seek employment elsewhere.

I don't
begin to think that I have the capacity as a human to fathom the mind of God
but there is one thing I am pretty sure about. He is no different than us in
the respect that He wants people to love Him because they want to, not because
they are forced to, which is why we have free will. So I would think God would
find it objectionable for a country to force its citizens to worship Him
because they wouldn't be doing it out of love, but at the threat of jail.

Would you
want someone to say they love you at gunpoint? Or would you prefer they love
you because you are you? If God wanted to make mindless drones to say they
loved Him he surely could have done so. God doesn't want a Christian nation, he
wants religious freedom. He wants you to love Him because you want to, not
because Kim Davis says you have to.

What people
who practice her modern brand of Christianity mistake in Jesus' words is when
He says to let your light shine among men. She would have you believe this
means wagging your tongue and telling other people what to do to not be sinful.
The people I have met that truly let their light shine and touched my life are
the ones who did so in their own actions. Love God and Love one another as
yourself. Love your enemy. A real Christian never has to tell you they are one;
you can tell by the way they treat you.

That same
crazy dad of mine is on his 10th marriage. I never felt comfortable around him
for obvious reasons so visits were sparse as I became an adult. I began to
notice that wife after wife were extremely rude and short with me and I never
understood why. That is until wife number nine came along. She was under the
impression that she was wife number three but that was actually my mother who
divorced him 20 years earlier.

She was
extremely kind and warm. When they inevitably divorced I made contact to
express my appreciation. She told me that my dad would tell her I was a
criminal and a terrible person to explain why I rarely came around. Eight wives
treated me poorly based on his lies. The ninth never treated me any way but
kindly. She didn’t judge people based on another person’s words. She didn’t
judge at all. She was truly letting her light shine among men.

Ironically
my dad once stood up in a church service in front of this wife and talked about
how terrible it was that churches were starting to let women speak openly in
services. I’d much rather have heard what she had to say.

When I
first started my freelance writing business from home I felt very alone and
didn't know how it would work out. I read a lady's blog online who claimed to
be making six figures and all I had to do to find out how (as if the $40,000 I
spent on my BA in Journalism plus all the places I'd been published weren't
enough) was give her $1,000 for her to coach me plus pay $40 a month to be a
part of her message board with other writers. I wondered why if she was doing
so well as a freelance writer, did she need my $1,000.

I wasn't
going to spend any more money on this writing thing. The talent is there and
the hard work had been done. I just needed guidance from someone who'd gone the
freelance route. I started to correspond with a guy from one of the companies I
contract through and we became friends.

He's sat up
many late nights getting me out of jams before deadlines, teaching me the
freelance ropes and introducing me to people who started sending me work. He
never charged a penny. He never gets annoyed, and he even gives me advice in my
personal life. He gives and he gives and when he's done with that he gives some
more. So I never had to ask what his beliefs were. His light shines brightly
among men. He's one of the best living examples I have ever seen of what Jesus
said a Christian should act like. And he's gay. That's something to really
think about if you count yourself among those who think you can't be gay and a
Christian.

If everyone
let their own light of kindness shine instead of protesting other's actions
like Westboro Baptist Church, Kim Davis, Chick-Fil A and so many others, the
world would be an awesome place. They spit at what they deem as sinners and
call them vile names. But the man they claim to worship ironically was
criticized in his time for eating and spending the majority of his time with
sinners, prostitutes and tax collectors. Why? Because the well have no need for
a doctor, but sick people do.

In Westboro
Baptist's Bible, apparently their Jesus ran around with signs at the funerals
of prostitutes that said "The only good whore is a dead whore." In Sunday
school their children sing "Jesus hates you this I know, for Westboro
tells me so."

If Jesus
were on Earth today instead of 2000 years ago, I truly believe that people like
Kim Davis, Westboro Baptist, and the extreme right of the Republican Party would
be the very ones nailing Him to a cross.

And it
would be all televised live on Fox News with Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean
Hannity doing the commentary, followed shortly by another investigative report
into the President's birth certificate.